Searching for Silverheels

by Jeannie Mobley

  “I already took it, and the Bible,” Sefa said.

  Silverheels stared at her. “The Bible?”

  “It had the address.”

  “What address?”

  “For his mother and sister. I promised him I’d send them his gold.”

  Silverheels smiled. “Of course you did,” she said. “Good, sweet, Sefa. What would we do without you?”

  Silverheels crossed to the trunk at the foot of Stephen’s bed and opened it, too. “We might as well do it for both of them, right? Ah, here we are.” She straightened up, a bag of gold dust in one hand and a packet of letters in the other. “We can send this home for him, too, once the mail is running. I’ll just keep them safe till then.”

  When they returned outside, Mr. Herndon was shoveling the snow away from the door of the dance hall. Sefa and Silverheels went to him and told him of the deaths.

  Herndon nodded grimly. “They won’t be the only ones. We’re going to need a hospital, and I won’t be doing any business until this is all over. We’ll treat the sick ones here.”

  By the end of that day, two feverish men were already sleeping in the dance hall. The next day they were joined by four more. Buck, however, was not brought in. Silverheels insisted that she alone care for her true love, and sent Sefa to help Herndon. So many sick men needed Sefa at the dance hall that she could not return even once to Buck’s cabin. So it was that Sefa got no chance to say good-bye to the man she loved more than life itself.

  After three days, Silverheels finally came into the dance hall. She announced Buck was dead, gave a theatrical sob, and ran to her cabin, where she locked herself in. Sefa wished the fever would take her, too, but it would not. So she worked on, through exhaustion and grief, administering her curing tea to any who would drink it.

  She was mopping the brow of a young boy a week later when he said, “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “Hush. Save your strength to get better,” Sefa said, coaxing a little tea into him.

  “I want to see Silverheels before I die. Will you get her? I want to tell her that I love her.”

  “I’ve got other men to tend to,” Sefa said. But Herndon was nearby and overheard.

  “I’ll keep watch here, Sefa. You fetch her. Maybe it’d help all these boys to have their sweetheart here with them. Lift their spirits to see a pretty face.”

  Sefa went to retrieve Silverheels. In the dancer’s cabin, several bags of gold dust sat on the table, along with the letters from Stephen’s trunk. Silverheels glanced at them, then agreed to Sefa’s request. She put on her prettiest dress and pinned silk roses into her golden hair, and Sefa knew how it would be. Her beauty would lift the men’s spirits, while Sefa’s tea saved their lives. And it would be Silverheels they would remember. But what could she do, the lump of mud in the wake of the goddess?

  Days dragged by. Sefa gave out medicine, mopped brows, spooned broth into the living, closed the eyes of the dead. Silverheels, glowing and beautiful, sang and spoke to the men, listened to their secrets, and piled their gold ever higher in her cabin.

  It took a month for the epidemic to run its course, a month that left nearly half the men dead and stacked frozen in the graveyard, where the bitter weather kept the bodies until the graves could be dug. At last, however, the day came when no new men arrived sick and none died, and those in the makeshift hospital had the fever behind them and the slow but hopeful days of recovery ahead.

  “I think we’re through the worst of it,” Herndon announced one night as Sefa and Silverheels headed off to bed.

  But Herndon had been wrong. Silverheels showed up the next day, her whole face flushed with fever.

  “I feel so tired,” she announced, as she stumbled in and collapsed against the piano, the back of her hand pressed to her forehead.

  “No,” a man sobbed from a bed nearby. “Not Silverheels!”

  Jack Herndon went to her side, full of concern. When he was near enough, she swooned gracefully into his arms. He swept her up right away.

  “Sefa, help me get her home. Bring some of that brew of yours,” Herndon called. He carried Silverheels all the way to her cabin and laid her on the bed. Sefa mopped her brow and cheeks with a damp cloth and was surprised when pink rouge came away. It surprised her too, when Silverheels was suddenly alert, slapping the cloth away.

  “Just let me rest,” Silverheels said. “I’m sure that’s all I need.” She batted her lashes at Herndon and he did as she said, taking Sefa with him.

  Sefa returned that evening with supper, and Silverheels reluctantly opened the door. In the dim light of the fire Sefa could see Silverheels was more flushed than before, with bright red spots appearing on her cheeks. She also saw Silverheels’s fancy kit of stage makeup open on the table, alongside all that gold.

  “It’s the pox for sure,” Silverheels said, pointing to her face, but staying in the dim light and not letting Sefa get too close. “I’ll be scarred! My beauty will be ruined!”

  “It doesn’t look like the pox,” Sefa said, suspicious. She glanced again at the gold.

  “Of course it’s the pox,” Silverheels snapped, “and it will make me ugly! I don’t want to be seen if I’m ugly. Get out!”

  Sefa wondered if she should tell anyone of her suspicions, but who in town would believe her? They were all blinded by love for Silverheels. Besides, Sefa was a good girl and didn’t like to speak ill of anyone.

  She returned in the morning but found the door was locked. She called, but got no answer. She tried again at supper time, but it was the same. When no response came the next morning, Sefa went to the dance hall and told the men of what Silverheels had said and how there was no sign of life at her cabin.

  As one, the recovering men rose from their beds, dressed, and tramped through the bright, cold morning to Silverheels’s cabin. As they walked, they vowed to give her all their gold if that’s what it took to console her. At her cabin, they knocked and called out sweet sentiments, but she did not answer. At last, two burly men broke the latch and burst in. The whole crowd of besotted men rushed inside, with ugly, forgotten Sefa in their wake.

  The cabin was snug and tidy as always. And empty. Silverheels was gone. And so too, Sefa noted silently, were the piles of gold from the table. In their place lay only a worn pair of dancing shoes with silver filigree on the heels.

  CHAPTER 22

  I sat staring at the pages long after I’d finished reading them. What had Josie meant by printing them up like this and giving them to me? And how many other copies had she made? Did she have the proof of what she was telling me—perhaps a relative of Jack Herndon or Sefa Weldon? No, I reminded myself that the wife and daughter of Eli Weldon were both inventions; Josie had made them up right in front of me. I found my list of names from the graves and looked at it again. There was no Wilbur or Stephen, so she had made them up too. So her whole story was a fabrication—characters and slander and all.

  The problem was, it was convincing slander. If she had printed a whole stack of them and intended to sell or give them to tourists, it would ruin my chances of enticing them into an outing to Buckskin Joe. Who wanted to go visit a place where wretched things had happened to wretched people? The beauty and romance of it was all lost.

  I vowed to find out what her plans were the next morning, but I didn’t get the chance. Mrs. Crawford called another meeting, and it was once again in the café. Most of the same ladies as before were there, with the exception of Mrs. Schmidt. Mrs. Crawford appeared to have recovered from the terrible headache the picnic had given her, and arrived at the café with a look on her face that meant business.

  George came too, and gave me a big warm smile. He apparently felt better about our kiss than I did, because he sat down and invited me to sit beside him, as if everything between us was perfect. Under the table, he put his hand on my knee, and I let him.

  When everyone was settled, Mrs. Crawford began the meeting. “Due to the unfortunate circumstances at yesterday’s picnic,
we were unable to tally up the pledges for the Liberty Bond drive. When I call your name, you can bring up your money, and George will record how far you are toward your fifty-dollar subscriptions.”

  The ladies in the café glanced around at each other nervously, but none of them said anything.

  The first name Mrs. Crawford called was Mrs. Engel. Mrs. Engel looked back at her in surprise. “Now, Phoebe, you know I don’t have anything.”

  “Nonsense. You raised eighteen dollars before the picnic, and raffle tickets were still selling.”

  “But the hat was ruined,” Mrs. Engel said. “By the time the Larsen boys fished it out of the mud, it had been half eaten by a cow. I’ll have to refund the money for all the tickets.”

  Mrs. Crawford frowned at the idea. “That won’t do. You simply must replace the hat with another, Mrs. Engel, and move forward with the raffle.”

  Mrs. Engel’s mouth fell open. “I can’t do that! That hat cost me twelve dollars, and it was as much as I could afford. To donate another—”

  “Of course you can afford it. It’s for the war effort. Remember the sacrifices our boys over there are making. Surely you will not shrink from making a sacrifice for their sakes. To see them home safely into the arms of their wives and mothers.”

  “I’ll see what I can manage,” Mrs. Engel muttered, her brow knitted.

  Mrs. Crawford gave a satisfied nod and started down the list again. One by one, the ladies reported what they had made—two dollars from the bake sale, and four from the knitting, but once spread among all the ladies who had contributed, no one had even made their initial one-dollar commitment, and none knew how they would complete a fifty-dollar pledge.

  Imogene and I had made $1.30 together, since Imogene had kissed a few boys at the dance and then made them pay up. It seemed Imogene had found a way to make money that suited her perfectly.

  “And George still owes Pearl at least a dime,” she added loudly as she set our money on the table in front of Mrs. Crawford.

  “My pleasure,” George said with a grin, and added a dime to our earnings as my face went scarlet.

  When all was said and done, there were only fifteen dollars on the table, and many women were saying they couldn’t pledge to a bond at all.

  “This is not nearly enough,” Mrs. Crawford said. “Mr. Merino down in Fairplay has already collected thirty-five dollars toward pledges, on twenty bonds.”

  “There is another option if you want to collect a bigger sum,” my mother said. With my father working in the kitchen, she was able to attend this meeting. “Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt did a lively business selling their franks after the rainstorm, and I believe Mrs. Schmidt is eager to use the proceeds for the war effort.”

  There was a murmur of approval around the room.

  Mrs. Crawford’s eyes narrowed and the line of her mouth hardened. “They had the nerve to serve their Hun food, after I expressly forbid it?”

  “I think they saved the picnic,” Mother said.

  Under the table, George removed his hand from my knee. I bit my lip and prayed my mother would go back to the kitchen without saying anything more.

  “I think it’s a fine idea,” said Mrs. Sorensen. “What would we have to do to convince Mrs. Schmidt to donate the money to the Liberty Bond fund?”

  “Oh, I don’t think it will take much convincing,” Mother said. “But I think it would have to start with an apology.”

  Mrs. Crawford’s face turned red and she began to splutter. If she’d been a train, she’d have probably had enough steam to get over the pass and all the way to California. Unfortunately though, she was Mrs. Crawford, and she wasn’t going anywhere. “I will not go crawling to a German to ask for money, if that is what you are implying, Margaret Barnell. The fact that she even sold German sausages at a Fourth of July picnic is a slap in the face to our boys over there. If she were a true patriot, she’d be here donating the money for herself. I blame her entirely for this disaster!”

  “I hardly think it’s Mrs. Schmidt’s fault that we had a gullywasher in the middle of the picnic,” Mrs. Abernathy said.

  “But she profited from it, and as a result, no one had money to spend on anything else.” Mrs. Crawford got to her feet and looked around at everyone. “I could not take her blood money and sleep at night, and I am surprised that those of you who paid good American dollars for German food can. And I certainly hope that you can all find an equal amount to spend on Liberty Bonds. I think the governor is very interested to know, these days, who is supporting the war effort and who is hindering it.”

  With that, she marched out of the café. Without a word to me, George stood and followed her. There was a mutter and buzz of conversation as others gathered their things and left as well, some looking worried, others angry. No one was smiling anymore.

  As the café emptied, my father stepped out of the kitchen, where he had apparently heard the whole thing. “I don’t know, Maggie. I don’t like it. When Phoebe Crawford has a bee in her bonnet, there’s sure to be trouble.”

  “I’m not going to sit by and let her ruin good people,” Mother said. “And I’m not going to let her scare me.”

  “Maybe I should stay for a while. Till things settle down,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” Mother said. “You know as well as any of us, you don’t have many months up at the mine before the snow flies. And with tourism down this summer, we need the money. Especially if Phoebe Crawford is going to pressure us all into buying those Liberty Bonds.”

  So it was settled. The next morning Father left for the mine, and things went back to normal in Como, or so it seemed at first. In the afternoon I went to the post office, hoping for a letter from Frank. While Mrs. Abernathy checked, I watched Mrs. Crawford trying to sell a Liberty Bond to one of the zinc miner’s wives, a small woman with a baby on her hip. The woman was trying to explain that she had spent all her spare money for the month on yarn.

  “It’s the duty of every American,” Mrs. Crawford replied unsympathetically.

  Mrs. Abernathy returned to the window and reported there was no letter. Then her eyes fell on Mrs. Crawford and she shook her head. “She’s determined to sell those bonds,” she muttered. Then she leaned closer and whispered, “She talked big to Mr. Merino at the Fairplay Mercantile, so it’s a matter of pride to her. She can’t stand to be showed up.”

  I glanced back at the miner’s wife and knew I had better get out before Mrs. Crawford got her hooks into me, or before George came in and found me. It made no sense, but ever since the kiss in the rain, George felt like a shoe on the wrong foot. I knew it was my fault. I hadn’t been romantic enough; I had listened too often to Josie and had been thinking the wrong thoughts. I did want to be with George—I had dreamed of it for years! I wanted to set things right with him, but I had no idea how.

  As I left the store, I saw Mrs. Engel across the street, putting a second hat in her window for the raffle—not as nice as the first, but still a worthy prize. She looked worried.

  I set off toward home, only to see George loitering in the street a block ahead of me. A little flutter went through me when I thought he was waiting outside the café for me, but then I realized that he had his clipboard and a money can to collect people’s Liberty Bond pledges. Plus, he wasn’t looking toward the café, or toward me at all. He was looking toward the platform at the depot.

  I followed his gaze. A train to Denver had only just pulled out, and Josie was standing on the platform watching it go. I remembered her National Women’s Party friends at the picnic. I guessed she had just seen them off. Her attention on the train, she didn’t see George as he approached slyly along the street, looking like a cat stalking a bird. In this case, I hoped he knew she was a very big bird, with a sharp beak and talons.

  I had stopped walking, still about a half block away, but I couldn’t leave. The fascination and dread of what was about to happen rooted me to the spot.

  Josie turned at last, only to find herself face to face with
George. He flashed his most spectacular smile. Josie scowled.

  “Good day, Mrs. Gilbert. It’s come to my attention that you haven’t yet begun your subscription for a Liberty Bond. And we all know how much you support liberty. How much can I put you down for?”

  “Not a red cent,” Josie said. “Now leave me alone, boy.” She tried to push past him, but he stepped in front of her.

  “Now Mrs. Gilbert, you know it’s in your best interest to buy one.”

  “And how do you know what’s in my best interest?”

  “These are dangerous times,” George said. “It wouldn’t hurt to own a little protection.”

  At that Josie gave him a look that could have scorched the whiskers off the devil himself. “I wouldn’t buy a rope from you Crawfords if I was dangling off a cliff,” she said.

  His smile disappeared. “Well you just might be, Josie Gilbert. And we Crawfords might just have enough rope to hang you,” he said. He turned as if to go and caught sight of me. At once his smile came back, but I felt no flutter this time.

  “What about you, Pearl? You’re a true patriot, right? You’ll support the war effort.”

  “Of course I’m a patriot. But I don’t have much money.”

  “What about the money you made taking that city boy on tours a few weeks ago? Every little bit helps the fund. Unless your loyalties lie elsewhere,” George said. He glanced at Josie.

  “Of course not,” I said. I reached into my apron pocket, where I carried a little money for making change in the café, and took out a nickel. I couldn’t tell George I didn’t have the money from taking Frank on tours. If he thought I’d done it for free, he’d think I was sweet on Frank. “Put it toward my mother’s subscription, please.”

  “I knew my girl would come through,” he said, giving me a bright smile and a peck on the cheek before writing down my contribution on his list. Then, whistling a tune as if nothing unpleasant had happened, he strode off toward his family’s store.

  “And here I’d hoped you were finally getting a spine,” Josie said when he had left. “He’ll keep taking as long as you give, you know.”